


memory lane runs in the other direction

by thatsparrow



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Minor Spoilers: Episode 75
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 23:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20317552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: What do you dream about when your dreams are your own?Fjord doesn't know—he hasn't been so lucky in some time. When he wakes up and thinks back, his resting hours are as black and bottomless as whatever fathomless pit where Uk'otoa waits. Whether it's because he's ill-practiced when it comes to remembering, or because some scale-armed part of Uk'otoa is still wrapped around his subconscious, he isn't sure—but Fjord does know what he'd like to dream about, if given the choice.[minor spoilers for episode 75]





	memory lane runs in the other direction

**Author's Note:**

> title from "cemetery row" by the minus 5

_ What do you dream about when your dreams are your own? _

Fjord doesn't know—he hasn't been so lucky in some time. When he wakes up and thinks back, his resting hours are as black and bottomless as whatever fathomless pit where Uk'otoa waits. Whether it's because he's ill-practiced when it comes to remembering, or because some scale-armed part of Uk'otoa is still wrapped around his subconscious, he isn't sure, but Fjord does know what he'd like to dream about, if given the choice. 

Yasha, first. If the gods were kind enough to grant him the choice, Fjord would like to live in the sort of gentle, rose-colored dreams where Yasha is with them still, clear-eyed and steady of mind. He'd like to see her kneeling down to wrap up sunset-colored petals and snow-white buds for Zuala, or eased back against a tree trunk around their evening campfire with the Magician's Judge stretched out on her lap. Running a whetstone along the length of it the way a musician might tune their lute strings. He'd like to see her smiling again, bright and melancholy-tinted as a winter's sun. 

Fjord would like the comfort of those dreams, because otherwise he closes his eyes and sees that other, shadowed version of Yasha—the one who walks in step with the Laughing Hand while stretching out her sword to carve him open from collarbone to hip. He doesn't want his last memories of her to be so corrupted. If truly given the choice, Fjord would like a god to reach down and show him the way towards waking her up and dispelling that clouded, cruel-edged look she now carries. Even if the dream was a lie, he'd take it happily. These days, he understands the appeal of a merciful delusion; no wonder Nott drinks the way she does.

Fjord would like to dream of Yasha, first, but he'd ask for other comforts, too, if his dreams would allow it. He'd like to see Vandren again, back when the gray was just coming in at Vandren's temples and Fjord was still growing fast enough that the rest of the crew would measure his height against the mainmast. He'd like to leave behind these brutal, frost-blistering northern mountains for the memory of a summer on the Lucidian, sleeves rolled up past the elbow and all his clothes turned stiff from the salt and Vandren clapping him on the back as he'd choked down his first mouthful of cheap, eye-watering rum.

_ Breathe through your nose, boy_, Vandren had said, trading out the still-full mug for one with water. _ It gets better_.

_ Does it_? 

Vandren had laughed. _ Maybe not the taste, but at least your willingness to stomach it_. 

Now, Fjord looks back and has to wonder whether Vandren was playing acolyte to Uk'otoa even then. Were Vandren's own dreams lit up in amber light? Was the ship's course being guided by Uk'otoa's will, or had those lies come later? Did Vandren know that the falchion and Uk'otoa's double-edged attention would turn to Fjord in his stead? Was that what he'd intended? Fjord doesn't know how to argue those thoughts down, or how to keep them from turning his memories of Vandren into something bitter-tasting.

He can't ignore what he knows now, and so instead, Fjord would like to dream up a version of himself that isn't aware of the extent to which Vandren had deceived him. Back before Uk'otoa, before Sabian—back to a time when he was younger and twig-thin and his only concerns had been practicing the litany of sailors' knots that Vandren had given him to memorize. Muscle coming in slow under his forest-green tan and evenings given way to foot-thumping shanties that rattled the waves around them. No god-like entities, no cursed fucking falchions—fucking _ none _ of it. Just the home Vandren had made for them and the crew, salt-soaked and ocean borne.

If his dreams were truly his own, Fjord would have them dedicated to Molly, too. So long as he's asking to spend his evenings in the past, then he'd like to see sunlight flashing silver and gold off the edges of Molly's dual blades again, purple-patterned tarot cards shifting there-and-gone between his restless fingertips. _ I am your god, long may I reign. _Not long enough, as it had happened.

(And what would Molly, say, were he with them now? Would he have paid some Xhorhasian tailor to turn his Platinum Dragon tapestry into a fur-lined winter coat? Would he have opened up his infernal scars as Obann sang forth the Laughing Hand's freedom? Would he have stayed by Yasha's side while the rest of them had run, working to save her fiend-trapped mind until the Hand's laughing wounds had driven him mad? For Yasha, Fjord is sure that Molly would have found the bravery none of the rest of them had managed.)

If he could, Fjord would like to return to the beginning, to that long-ago tavern in Trostenwald—and funny, isn't it, that it's really thanks to Molly that the seven of them came together at all. (Eight, counting Caduceus, and—albeit indirectly—Molly had a hand in that, as well.) If his dreams would permit him such a mercy, Fjord would like to be taken back to when Molly breathed still—not just alive, but so full of life that the limits of his body barely seemed able to contain it. All that color bleeding out in the form of his tattoos, his gem-studded piercings, his multi-patterned eyesore of a coat.

In true dreams—ones spun up by his mind rather than by any divine or pseudo-divine influence—the distinction between reality and illusion is irrelevant, and so what better place to indulge in visions of the past? What better place to imagine a world where Molly never died—could never die—and Vandren guided him still, and Yasha had never been turned down some darker path? If his dreams were truly his own, Fjord would like them to be ones where laughter proved easier to come by than pain. Given the sum total of his waking and resting hours, it doesn't seem like so much to ask for. Gods know the material realm has never treated any of them so kind. 


End file.
